SAP partners with TATIS SA on customs, border management

Creating a competitive advantage in the customs and border management market for both companies, Geneva-based TATIS SA customs management specialist and global business solutions giant, SAP AG, have formed an alliance partnership in which they will jointly market and implement the world's only customs management system (TATIScms) that is integrated with a tax management system (SAP PSCD).

In addition, TATIS SA has formed a joint venture known as TATIS Africa with South African black-owned and managed Tsohle Technology Holdings, which focuses on systems engineering and systems integration and, through its solutions subsidiary, Tsohle Business Solutions, has specialist skills in border management systems.

TATIS Africa will resell and implement the TATIScms solution in Africa. It is also one of SAP Africa's prime partners in the Accenture consortium bidding for the South African Revenue Services' tax and customs modernisation project.

The TATIS / Tsohle relationship also includes the appointment of Tsohle Business Solutions as TATIS SA's Centre of Excellence (COE). Based in Cape Town, the COE will provide development, support and maintenance services to TATIS customers worldwide. Staffed entirely by South Africans, the COE is already working with other implementation partners on its first assignment - the Luxembourg Customs modernisation project.

The partnership between TATIS SA and SAP is in line with SAP repositioning itself globally as a business process platform provider on whose technology independent software vendors (ISVs) will build industry-specific or specialist solutions.

"We used to build software to resolve the issues and concerns raised by business and analysts and sell the software back into the business world," says SAP Africa's Senior Value Engineer, Mehmood Khan. "But the advent of service-oriented architecture (SOA), which componentises the functionality in software, has allowed us to move towards providing an enormously function-rich software foundation that ISVs can then exploit for developing purpose-specific applications.

"Our partnership with TATIS SA is a very good example of how our new positioning enhances our ability to give customers precisely the solutions they need - in that it seamlessly integrates TATIS's superior customs domain expertise and intellectual property with SAP's world-leading business management software."

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In 2005, SAP had 62% of its peer group market. And, as a major supplier to the public sector, the company has many customs administrations around the world on its financials and enterprise resource management solutions.

The TATIS customs management product was built in 2004 using J2EE as the development platform, which conforms to SAP's version of SOA known as Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA). It has since been ported onto SAP NetWeaver by the Cape Town COE and certified by SAP.

"It was a natural progression, therefore, for us to join forces with SAP," says TATIS SA CEO, Charles Upchurch. "Our solution sets dovetailed perfectly and there was no need to build expensive interfaces. So customs departments get the full spectrum of functionality they need - from processing and enforcement to back-office financials and reporting, pretty much out of the box.

"They're not trapped into all the management frustration and costs of a multi-vendor environment. And because the offering is modular, they can start with the TATIS solution and add SAP modules as their improved revenue collection capabilities provide the finance."

With international trade increasing at 20% per annum and the pre-empting and management of international security threats now at least as important as revenue collection, the acquisition and rapid implementation of customs and border management technology is a priority for most governments.

"Avian 'flu, for instance, has become a customs and border management issue because it can enter countries faster through imported exotic birds than through migrating wild birds," Upchurch says. "Containers are also an enormous security threat. More than 90% of the world's trade moves by container cargo and, even in the US, fewer than 5% of all containers are inspected.

"The easiest way to balance trade security with trade facilitation is through robust risk management in an integrated technology solution that covers duties, excise, regional and multilateral trade agreements, border law enforcement, immigration, and public health and safety.

"The TATIS SAP offering is the only one that can do all that."